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Prediction and Prevention of Risks Related to Hydro-Geotechnical Hazards

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A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Water and Climate Change".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2023) | Viewed by 8276

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Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Ali Saeidi

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Guest Editor

Department of Applied Sciences, University of Quebec at Chicoutimi, Saguenay, QC, Canada
Interests: risk analysis associated with natural hazards; numerical analysis in geotechnical; stability assessment in geomechanics; sensitive clay mechanical behaviour; rock burst prediction; underground spaces stability analysis

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Over the last few decades, hydro-geotechnical hazards have caused significant damage to both natural and human-made environments all over the world. These hazards, such as floods, landslides, and earthquakes, threaten socio-economic activities and the operational safety and stability of infrastructure, cause several billion dollars of damage, and more importantly, they are responsible for several deaths. Pre-emptive measures must ensure the safety and serviceability of built structures, but it is imperative to be able to develop a risk assessment methodology. It is necessary to develop decision-making tools for forecasting and assessing risks, but also for the management and mitigation of disaster risks caused by hydro-geotechnical hazards. This Special Issue focuses on the risks associated with hydro-geotechnical hazards and invites submissions that exploit state-of-the-art research, case studies, and lessons learned through failures, including but not limited to earth dam embankment stability, rock erosion of dam spillways, rainfall-induced landslides, geotechnical problems associated with water, landslide risk prediction and evaluation, triggering and failure mechanisms, numerical modeling and GIS application for hazard zonation, etc.

Prof. Dr. Ali Saeidi
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

rainfall
risk
embankments
slopes
landslides
hazards
prevention
prediction, dams
spillways

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

24 pages, 8016 KiB

Open AccessArticle

An Update on Rainfall Thresholds for Rainfall-Induced Landslides in the Southern Apuan Alps (Tuscany, Italy) Using Different Statistical Methods

by Roberto Giannecchini, Alessandro Zanon and Michele Barsanti

Water 2024, 16(5), 624; https://doi.org/10.3390/w16050624 - 20 Feb 2024

Viewed by 738

Abstract

The southern Apuan Alps (Italy) are prone to rainfall-induced landslides. A first attempt to calculate rainfall thresholds was made in 2006 using non-statistical and repeatable methods for the 1975–2002 period. This research aims to update, validate, and compare the results of that attempt through different statistical approaches. Furthermore, a new dataset of rainfall and landslides from 2008 to 2016 was collected and analyzed by reconstructing the rainfall events via an automatic procedure. To obtain the rainfall thresholds in terms of the duration–intensity relationship, we applied three different statistical methods for the first time in this area: logistic regression (LR), quantile regression (QR), and least-squares linear fit (LSQ). The updated rainfall thresholds, obtained through statistical methods and related to the 1975–2002 dataset, resulted in little difference from the ones obtained with non-statistical methods and have similar efficiency values among themselves. The best one is provided by the LR, with a landslide probability of 0.55 (efficiency of 89.8%). The new rainfall thresholds, calculated by applying the three statistical methods on the dataset from 2008–2016, are similar to the 1975–2002 ones, except for the LR threshold, which exhibits a higher slope. This result confirms the validity of the thresholds obtained with the old database. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Prediction and Prevention of Risks Related to Hydro-Geotechnical Hazards)

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Graphical abstract

14 pages, 8752 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Instability of Embankment Slopes Due to Overflow and Drawdown

by Jaehong Kim, Yongmin Kim and Alfrendo Satyanaga

Water 2023, 15(19), 3402; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15193402 - 28 Sep 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1219

Abstract

Establishing a geotechnical rationale for an embankment overflow is challenging. The occurrence of embankment overflow is deemed unlikely since the initial highest water level of the embankment is assumed to be fixed as a designed flood water level or a seasonal flood-limited water level when calculating the rainfall amount in the hydrological stability analysis. However, the possibility of overtopping can be assessed by employing copula functions. This approach takes into account the return frequency of overflow and the fluctuation of probable water levels due to climate change rather than relying on the fixed highest water levels of an embankment. This study examined the effect of tensile cracks leading to the shallow failure of embankment slopes during drawdown and placed an emphasis on the vulnerability of embankment slopes due to extreme rainfall events. Throughout the comprehensive numerical simulations, it was found that the critical period for embankment slope collapse was immediately after drawdown for the upstream slope and during the initial stages of overflow for the downstream slope. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Prediction and Prevention of Risks Related to Hydro-Geotechnical Hazards)

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Figure 1

24 pages, 17693 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Evaluation of the Effect of Surface Irregularities on the Hydraulic Parameters within Unlined Dam Spillways

by Yavar Jalili Kashtiban, Ali Saeidi, Marie-Isabelle Farinas and Javier Patarroyo

Water 2023, 15(16), 3004; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15163004 - 20 Aug 2023

Viewed by 951

Abstract

Erosional incidents have heightened the necessity of studies regarding rock mass erosion in unlined dam spillways. Enhanced comprehension of hydraulic erodibility necessitates an investigation into the geomechanical and hydraulic aspects of erosional phenomena. Controlled blasting is commonly employed to establish unlined spillways in rock masses, and this process results in irregularities along the spillway surface profile. Recent research has identified key geometric parameters of rock masses that impact erosion in unlined spillways, such as joint opening, dip and dip direction, and joint spacing. However, the effect of spillway surface irregularities on hydraulic parameters remains uncertain. Numerous studies have examined the surface roughness of rock at the millimeter scale within the domain of hydraulic engineering. Despite these efforts, a noticeable gap persists in our understanding of how surface irregularities specifically exert influence over hydraulic parameters. Currently, there is a lack of a clear equation or methodology to incorporate irregularities into hydraulic erosive parameters. The main aim of this study is to show how such irregularities affect the hydraulic parameters. This study is dedicated to emphasizing the importance of considering these irregularities. Building upon the findings obtained, the core aim of this research is to facilitate the formulation of an equation in future investigations that effectively accounts for these irregularities when calculating hydraulic erosive parameters. To assess the significance of surface irregularities in unlined spillways, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with ANSYS-Fluent software was employed to analyze 25 configurations of spillway surface irregularities and their effects on various factors, including pressure (total, dynamic, and static pressures), shear stress, flow velocity, and energy. The findings indicated that irregularities significantly influenced the hydraulic parameters. Specifically, an increased irregularity height led to a decrease in maximum velocity, total pressure, and shear stress. Conversely, total energy loss increased, amplifying the rock mass’s vulnerability to erosion due to these irregularities. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Prediction and Prevention of Risks Related to Hydro-Geotechnical Hazards)

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Figure 1

21 pages, 4515 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Multi-Level Data Analyses for Characterizing Rainfall-Induced Landslide Scenarios: The Example of Catanzaro Municipality (South Italy)

by Olga Petrucci, Graziella Emanuela Scarcella and Massimo Conforti

Water 2023, 15(13), 2437; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15132437 - 1 Jul 2023

Viewed by 1119

Abstract

This paper presents a GIS-based approach to create a multilevel data system for detailed knowledge of landslide occurrences in small territorial units such as municipalities. The main aim is to collect all the available data (geological, geomorphological, and climatic data, as well as landslide inventory maps and catalogues) in a structured data management system and perform further analyses to identify the typical landslide scenarios of the study area that can be useful in landslide risk management. We demonstrated the use of the methodology analyzing landslide risk in the municipality of Catanzaro (southern Italy), having a surface of 111.7 km², 20.5% of which was affected by landslides. The spatial and temporal distribution of landslides highlighted that in several cases, they are reactivations of pre-existing phenomena. In fact, in the municipality, approximately 17% of the buildings fall within landslides-affected areas, 7.9% of which are in areas where landslides are classified as active. Furthermore, active landslides involve 8.1% and 9.5% of the roads and railways, respectively. In the 1934–2020 study period, 53% of activations occurred between October and December and were triggered by daily rain which in the highest percentage of cases (49%) showed values between 50 and 100 mm. The proposed GIS platform can be easily updated in order to preserve the landslide history of the area and can be enriched with further thematic layers (i.e., layers concerning flood events, which often occur simultaneously with major landslide events). The case study demonstrates how the platform can support landslide risk management in terms of monitoring, planning remedial works, and the realization/updating of civil protection plans. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Prediction and Prevention of Risks Related to Hydro-Geotechnical Hazards)

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49 pages, 19404 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Spatial Evaluation of a Natural Flood Management Project Using SAR Change Detection

by Sean Jarrett and Daniel Hölbling

Water 2023, 15(12), 2182; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15122182 - 9 Jun 2023

Viewed by 2032

Abstract

This study proposes an evaluation method using C-band Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data to provide evidence of flood characteristic changes after the restoration of a floodplain. A portable, flexible evaluation framework has replicated previous change detection research approaches to analyse a Natural Flood Management (NFM) project on the Sussex Ouse river in southern England, conducted by the Sussex Flow Initiative (SFI), to ascertain how control measures have helped mitigate flood risk. GIS operations were conducted on the mapped results of the change detection procedure to identify how flood area, form and compactness have been affected after the NFM installation restored a floodplain to slow river flow and how these changes relate to the overall aims of the project. Innovative means were employed to verify the change detection methodology by sampling flood records from internet-published drone footage. The overall accuracy achieved using the Change Detection and Thresholding (CDAT) technique was 75%. The use of SAR data provides evidence of how NFM features function during significant flood events, providing a mapped delineation of the actual flood extent. A comprehensive scorecard has been developed to evaluate the positive and negative outcomes of the spatial changes that have manifested in post-restoration floods, in comparison to inundation before the installation. Results from this study have been included in the annual report of the SFI project to demonstrate how key features have attenuated flood waters in accordance with design intentions. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Prediction and Prevention of Risks Related to Hydro-Geotechnical Hazards)

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17 pages, 4096 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Preliminary Study of the Seepage Hammer Effect and Its Impacts on the Stability of Layered Infinite Slope

by Wei-Lin Lee, Yih-Chin Tai, Chjeng-Lun Shieh and Chih-Wei Lu

Water 2023, 15(10), 1832; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15101832 - 11 May 2023

Viewed by 1634

Abstract

A rapid change in the pore water pressure of unsaturated soil due to a wetting front is a crucial factor and may result in instabilities in layered slopes. This study presents preliminary research on such a change, which we define as the seepage hammer effect. Vertical infiltration with multiple soil layers by column test was implemented to investigate the mechanism of the seepage hammer effect and distinguish it from the well-known Lisse effect and reverse Wieringermeer effect. A two-phase flow model was utilized to understand the evolutions of pore water/air pressure and volumetric water content, and its result evolved into a layered infinite slope stability analysis. Thus, the impacts of the seepage hammer effect on slope stability can be analyzed. This study found that the seepage hammer effect was triggered when the wetting front reached the interface of multiple layers and impermeable layers, and the rising speed of pore water pressure was proportional to the air venting capacity of soil. Slope stability analysis showed that the safety factor may decline suddenly because of the seepage hammer effect. Its relationship with the factor of safety and the sliding velocity is proportional. The detection of the seepage hammer effect could be a potential application of the study of fast-moving landslides. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Prediction and Prevention of Risks Related to Hydro-Geotechnical Hazards)

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